


Waiting for Change

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top Ten Blackice Fics [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, F/M, cis woman Jack Frost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21537583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Because I loves me some rule 63 and het.Jack as an always girl (please no magic spell gone awry turning him into one) and Pitch making a cold and fear-filled night together."So I heard it’s blackice week? Let’s pretend I intended to contribute.Jacqueline sees that others change, that others are not alone. She fears that she will never be like them. Then she meets Pitch.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Series: My Top Ten Blackice Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552192
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40
Collections: Blackice Short Fics





	Waiting for Change

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 5/26/2013.

Today, Jacqueline watched one of the village girls who had looked like her when she started watching teach her own daughter to sew. Soon, that daughter will look like Jacqueline. Soon after, she will get married and have daughters of her own. And those daughters will eventually look like Jacqueline, and so on and on forever. That’s how she’s seen time pass for everyone, everywhere the wind has taken her. Only she does not change.

In the cold night, she looks up to the moon. It told her her name, but not why she does not change. Useless thing. She could have stolen a name off a gravestone. She could have made one up. She doesn’t even really need one, anyway, since she can’t speak to anyone.

The Wind, the most companionable thing in her world, seems to notice her mood, and gently lifts her long white braid. It is the only thing about her that makes it seem possible that she could age someday.

“Not tonight,” she says. “It’s not a good night.” Which is not to say there haven’t been good nights, and good days. She’s explored a great deal of the world, and seen many strange and wonderful things. She’s discovered she can understand every language she hears. She’s learned how to control snow and ice with her shepherd’s crook. She can appreciate being strong and free, never feeling sick or hungry.

But tonight these things are no comfort. What good is her power to anyone, even herself? If she is never sick, never hungry, does that mean that she will never die? Does that mean that she has only more of the same to look forward to? A frozen girl, unchanging and alone, always alone.

“Am I being punished?” She asks no one. “Let me know how to atone, and I will!” Of course, there is no answer save the meaningless noise of the wind, and she finds herself growing very afraid. She could lose her mind like this. Perhaps she already has.

She is about to scream for the wind to carry her far away when she hears a voice speak from the base of the tree she’s sitting in. “You shouldn’t be out alone in the forest at night, especially at this time of year.” It’s a man’s voice, very casual and conversational. “You could freeze to death. Or I suppose you, in particular, could fall out of that tree. And you look positively too old to be taking such foolish risks. What will your friends think? Your sweetheart?”

“Are you talking to me?” Jacqueline calls down. Of course he isn’t. No one talks to her. No one can.

The man, thin and dressed all in black, looks up at her in surprise. “You can see me? Impossible!” He peers at her in silence for a few moments. “Oh—you’re not human.”

She’s sort of known that, but to hear it stated so bluntly causes panic to beat in her chest for a moment, if only because she doesn’t know what she might be if _not_ human. “How can you see me, then?” She jumps out of the tree and lands a little distance away from the stranger.

“Well, I’m not human either. Or I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“What are you then?” His skin is gray, and he’s taller than any man she’s seen before, but she doesn’t know what those add up to.

“Who, what—not much difference for people like us. I am Pitch Black, the Boogeyman.” He grins at her and she sees his teeth are sharp. “Normally unseen and unheard.” He bows slightly.

“I’m Jacqueline Frost. As far as I know. Always unseen and unheard till now.” She curtseys stiffly.

“And you were afraid of always being unseen and unheard. Yes, I can taste it now. Quite a rare fear, actually, from a sane mind.” He steps closer to her. “A pity it’s fading now. Still, there may be others…”

“Why do you care about what I fear?” She holds her staff in front of her, but doesn’t back away.

“It sustains me. When nothing else does. I am very lonely, you know.”

Why does that make her so afraid? Can he tell? He’s beginning to smile—does that mean yes or no? “How lonely?”

“Desperately lonely,” he breathes, stepping closer once again.

This time she does back away. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“I tell the truth to my own advantage. Here’s some more. You’re just as afraid that I’ll leave as that I’ll stay. You’re afraid you’ll never change. You’re afraid that you’ll go mad. You’re afraid that one day you’ll be as desperate as I’ve let you think I am. You’re afraid…you’re afraid that you’ll never be touched like Sarah in the village is touched by Robert.”

“Stop! How could you know any of that?”

“It’s my nature. You know, you could have had Robert, I think, if you had been a human girl. You are…rather beautiful.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She turns away from Pitch.

“Then don’t talk.” Somehow, he’s managed to appear behind her in an instant. He places his hands on her shoulders and her back stiffens. “I know I don’t look like him, but observe…my hands aren’t passing through you.”

She swallows nervously. That statement shouldn’t be as compelling as it is, given that she’s just met him and the only thing she knows about him is that he lives on fear. But she has been so, so lonely, and so, so cold. His hands seem to burn through the thin fabric of her homespun dress. If she sends him away, he might never come back. Then there would be no one to talk to, forever. And there was a sort of feral grace in the long bones of his face…and maybe this would finally change her…She shivers. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m rather nervous.”

“I don’t mind,” Pitch says, reaching down to untie her braid. “Be as nervous as you like. Would you like to get out of the snow?” He presses a light kiss under her ear. She nods, and shadows seem to fly up around them.

The light, when it returns, is very faint. Jacqueline can make out a bed and not much else. It doesn’t look a thing like Robert and Sarah’s. Pitch guides her towards it, has her sit down. He sits next to her, unraveling her braid. “If there’s anything you want me to do, tell me,” he says softly. He seems different here, hidden from the moonlight. Kinder. Less like a devil in a play.

“I want to be warm,” Jacqueline whispers.

“I’ll do my best,” he replies, carding his fingers through her hair, a touch she leans into. He tilts her face towards him and bends down to begin to kiss her—gently, carefully. When her fear begins to ebb he slides his tongue into her cool mouth.

The sound she makes then is almost, but not quite, a sob. But she only pulls him closer.

Soon her pure white skin is bared for him, almost luminous in the faint light. To her, his gray hands feel like five-fingered flames as they smooth across her arms and stomach and legs, cup her small breasts and toy with her nipples. He reaches down between her legs, behind the white curls there, and to feel such warmth there makes her gasp and slicks his fingers. _Clever fingers,_ she thinks, not knowing what she wants him to do with them, but trusting that he knows, though she wishes he would begin to hurry. She needs—she needs—

But Pitch does not hurry, for who is to say she will not leave, run away, after this one encounter? And so he is deliberate with his fingers, and even more so with his mouth—her fingers clenching in his hair oh she tastes like new fallen snow—and pretends not to hear her call Robert’s name, then. When he fills her, when he is able to kiss her once again, when she is pushing back, when he is once more reaching a hand to the juncture between them, then she calls his name. And again and again. She scratches his back and he hopes he’ll heal slowly.

When they are finished, Pitch can tell in every white curve of her body that she’s afraid he’ll tell her to leave. It’s a common fear, but he’s rarely the cause, so he curls up next to her and does not reassure her. He needs it. He needs her.

He’ll never tell her to go, but he can never tell her she can stay.


End file.
